Friday, 1 October 2010

Tricky or a Treat?

Tricky or a Treat?

The Samhain Series of Pipes.

With the imminent onset of Halloween,I am reminded that last year, I purchased one of a new, reasonably priced series of 'entry level' Pete's, called the Samhain, just to see what the quality was like and whether they smoked well. I was particularly drawn to and liked, the X220B tapered stem version, which looks very similar to the new Mark Twain series.

The night of Samhain, in Irish, Oiche Shamhana, is one of the principal festivals of the Celtic calendar and falls on the 31st of October. It represents the final harvest. It is custom in some areas to set a place for the dead at the Samhain feast and tell tales of the ancestors on that night.

In early Ireland people gathered at the ritual centres of the tribes, for Samhain was the principle calendar feast of the year. The greatest assembly was the “The feast of Taka”, focusing on the seat of the High King as the heart of the sacred land,the point of conception for the new year. In every household throughout the country, hearth fires were extinguished . All waited for the Druids to light the new fire of the year – not at Tara, but at Tlachtga , a hill twelve miles to the north-west ,it marked the burial place of Tlachtga , daughter of the great druid Mogh Ruith, who may once have been a goddess in her own right in a former age.

This 221 bent billiard shape with saddle stem is a fine example of the Samhain series,it is such a typical Peterson shape. The Samhain series, which recognizes Halloween and the Celtic festival that celebrates the onset of winter and a new year. The series, nickel-banded and stamped with a witch on a broom, is stained to an appropriate glossy black-and-orange finish. It is appropriate just as we begin to consider Halloween. They are in my opinion, very competitively priced at around $89.

Samhain 221 saddle fishtail.

Here is another fine example, an A1 bulldog shape.

I would highly recommend this very good series of pipes,particularly to any new pipesters as they are very competitively priced, smoke well and are very handsome. Only downside is whether you can live with that glossy finish,I could not fault them otherwise.

3 comments:

I too have an X220B. I have better smokers but not at this price point. The gloss finish doesn't seem to hurt the smoking qualities on my example. It reminds me more of a slightly smaller version of the XL90 with a saddle stem.

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Retired gentleman pipe smoker of Celtic origin.
" The difference between a Pipe connoisseur and a Pipe historian: The pipe connoisseur might be defined as a laconic pipe historian, and the
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